Nowadays, JavaScript is the most popular programming language and one of the foremost widespread software development technologies. With its popularity, it has dramatically changed the face of web development. A few years ago, it was magical what we could do with JavaScript, for instance easily running in the browser as well as on the server. If there is a web application project in mind, developers might think about building stack around JavaScript and other tools. After that, they will surely come across Node.js technology for the back-end development platform. Node.js is a tool that fueled the buzz around the use of JavaScript for server-side programming.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine for easily building fast and scalable network applications. Due to its event-driven and non-blocking, I/O model makes it very efficient and lightweight. Node.js is a cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and can work within the Node.js runtime on OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows. Moreover, it opens new opportunities for developers because it uses JavaScript on the front-end and back-end. For the last few years, Node.js technology became a trend and provides lots of off-the-shelf solutions. Additionally, it was used for variety mid-sized projects, however, a few years ago its capabilities took a major leap forward. As a consequence, Node.js takes advantage of a good ratio between product performance, developer effort and exceptional scalabilities. Overall, Node.js technology has become the most favoured JS framework for almost all web developers.

How is Node.js technology different from web JavaScript?

In terms of language, there is no difference between web Node.js technology and JavaScript technology. To be specific, Node.js has a different set of APIs. In browsers, you have a variety of Web APIs uncovered that assist users to connect with UI. Also, it offers some supports such as file systems or HTTP request, however, they are limited due to security concerns. Meanwhile, Node.js assists with different APIs suitable for back-end development.

What is Node.js technology used for?

To achieve the best application performance in web development, Node.js is used for real-time applications, collaborative tools and data streaming applications. Firstly, Node.js ensures great speed and performance. Also, it can support intense traffic of multiple short messages, or chatrooms when messages are displayed to many users at the same time. Secondly, the ability to process real-time flows are extremely good. Trello is a project management application that is rather popular with software development companies. This application was developed on the basis of Node.js and benefited from its event-driven, non-blocking model. Node.js is great for applications requiring immediate updates, such as various collaboration tools and online documentation suites. Lastly, Node.js is great for data streaming applications. It is critical for audio and video streaming applications. Netflix is an example of how Node.js is powerful in this environment. NodeJS can send large amounts of data in smaller packages instead of a single batch.

Why is it worth developing your project in Node.js?

First of all, using Node.js as your server technology gives your team a great boost that comes from using the same language on both the front-end and back-end. This means that your team is more efficient and cross-functional, which in turn leads to lower development costs. In addition to that, it is worth mentioning that JavaScript is the most popular programming language, so your application’s codebase will be easier to understand for more developers. You can also reuse and share the code between the front-end and back-end parts of your application, which speeds up the development process. On top of that, the Node.js community is constantly growing – the number of StackOverflow questions is steadily increasing, so the knowledge base for the technology is widely available. The fact that the whole Node.js technology stack is open-source and free is also great news. Finally, Node.js offers a great package manager, NPM and the amount of available open-source tools in NPM’s registry is massive and growing fast. These are just a few of the many advantages of Node.js that you should consider when choosing the technology for your next project.

Where Node.js technology can be used?

Node.js can be used as a server-side web application. Node.js with ExpressJS can also be used to create classic web applications on the server-side. However, while possible, this request-response paradigm in which Node.js technology would be carrying around rendered HTML as not the most typical use-case. There are arguments to be made for and against this approach.

Pros:

If your application doesn’t have any CPU intensive computation, you can build it in Javascript top-to-bottom, even down to the database level if you use JSON storage Object DB like MongoDB. This eases development (including hiring) significantly.

Crawlers receive a fully-rendered HTML response, which is far more SEO-friendly than, say, a Single Page Application or a WebSocket app run on top of Node.js.

Cons:

Any CPU intensive computation will block Node.js responsiveness, so a threaded platform is a better approach. Alternatively, you could try scaling out the computation.

Using Node.js with a relational database is still quite a pain. Do yourself a favour and pick up any other environment like Rails, Django, or ASP.Net MVC if you’re trying to perform relational operations.

Conclusion

Overall, Node.js development services can be involved in any business sphere with a couple of exceptions mentioned above. Over the last few years, it rapidly advanced from a specific solution for runtime communications to a full-fledged back-end technology with a number of powerful high-level frameworks (e.g. Express, Koa, Next or Nuxt). This evolution made it even more attractive for businesses and any Node.js development company there is; software developers speak highly of it. And if you would like to know what companies are using Node.js in production, the list will be impressive, including such giants as PayPal, Netflix, Uber, LinkedIn, eBay, Walmart, Medium, NASA, Mozilla, and Trello.

Savvycom uses Node.js technology to touch the techniques of the future

At Savvycom, we use Node.js to stay updated with the latest technologies. Also, by using Node.js we can satisfy our great customers. There are some applications that we have developed applying Node.js technology such as Milky Chat and Shopping App.

Have you ever thought what your child is doing at kindergarten? Milky Chat is a communication platform for parents to connect with kindergarten teachers to get the latest images and information about their kids. Teachers use the mobile app to take photos, add notes and information about the kids in their classes such as how many diapers/clothes changed or how much water/milk drunk. Once there are new activities of the kids, their parents got notified on the mobile so that they can open the app to view and interact.

Another application that we have designed and developed is Shopping App – Sale & Reward System. This application helps shop owners to distribute Offers and Gift Cards to users who have installed Reward application on their mobile devices. Users can find and pick Gift Cards similar to the way they play the Pokemon Go game. Users can invite their friends, co-workers to use Reward application and get Reward.